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Getting Started

WHERE TO START?

If you are try­ing to make the leap from being a good casual player or “kitchen-table” player to play­ing com­pet­i­tively, here is an action list:

  1. Learn some­thing about the Scrabble com­mu­nity: http://​old​town​scrab​ble​.com/​2​9​/​0​3​/​t​h​e​-​s​c​r​a​b​b​l​e​-​c​o​m​m​u​n​ity.
  2. Get com­fort­able with the Scrabble lex­i­con (and the asso­ci­ated alpha­bet soup). Word knowl­edge is one of the prin­ci­pal things that dis­tin­guishes casual play­ers from com­pet­i­tive play­ers, so you should be pre­pared to take a sys­tem­atic approach to increas­ing your Scrabble vocab­u­lary (more on that later in the list). At this point, you need to be famil­iar with the OWL2-LWL (and know a lit­tle about its his­tory): http://​old​town​scrab​ble​.com/​c​a​t​e​g​o​r​y​/​l​e​x​i​con.
  3. Learn the basic rules of com­pet­i­tive Scrabble: http://​old​town​scrab​ble​.com/​3​1​/​0​3​/​t​o​u​r​n​a​m​e​n​t​-​r​u​les
  4. Get com­fort­able using a track­ing (or score) sheet: http://​old​town​scrab​ble​.com/​1​3​/​0​3​/​s​c​o​r​e​-​s​h​e​ets.
  5. Learn some words. At a min­i­mum, you should be famil­iar with all the words in the Beginner words lists (http://​old​town​scrab​ble​.com/​w​o​r​d​s​t​udy). You’ll have more fun if you’re also famil­iar with the words on the Intermediate word lists (see the Word Study page). Some clubs will let you use a “cheat sheet” until you get com­fort­able (the cheat sheet that is gen­er­ally used is approx­i­mately equiv­a­lent to the com­bined Beginner and Intermediate words lists).
  6. Practice online. Play some timed games and get used to the process: http://​www​.isc​.ro.
  7. Find a Scrabble club. Go make some friends (and play some Scrabble): http://​www2​.scrab​ble​-assoc​.com/​C​a​s​u​a​l​C​l​u​b​s​.​asp (casual clubs), http://​www​.scrab​ble​play​ers​.org/​w​/​C​l​ubs (com­pet­i­tive clubs).
  8. Play in a Scrabble tour­na­ment: http://​www​.cross​-tables​.com.
  9. Decide how good you want to be and set some goals (but don’t for­get to enjoy the game – that’s the point of it all, right?).